


How a Ghost Lives

by the_throwaway_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Blood and Injury, Character Study, Denial, Depression, Dissociation, Escapism, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt Remus Lupin, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Loneliness, M/M, No Dialogue, One Shot, POV Third Person, POV Third Person Omniscient, Past Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, Post-Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Remus Lupin Needs a Hug, Short One Shot, Songfic, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Werewolf Remus Lupin, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:28:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26733610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_throwaway_account/pseuds/the_throwaway_account
Summary: Dramatic, poetic one-shot exploring how Remus may have coped (or failed to cope) after Halloween 1981.Each month the cruel mother moon shakes Remus awake. More than a few times, he has tried and failed to drink or otherwise medicate through the pain, but it always manages to break through...
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	How a Ghost Lives

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, thanks for clicking on my story! 
> 
> This is a song-fic inspired by 'Alone In My Home' by Jack White. It was written for an ASMR video you can find after searching 'Lee Dobecka' on YouTube, if you're curious to hear it read aloud along with the song lyrics.

Remus exists in a small house hidden three separate times. First by distance, with the nearest neighbor being miles away. Secondly by dense trees, old and twisting creatures, the kind that nearly build a solid wall. Thirdly, and most vitally, his home is concealed by magic. They are intricate wards, ridiculously high-level work. Lupin before that Halloween would have actually taken pride in setting them up successfully; he would have been grateful for his magical education and further independent study afterward. But as he is now, the setting of the wards had been a purely mechanical endeavor, simply a thing that had to be done. The process could not have even been called a chore, because that requires an emotional response, distaste or dread, something with feeling.

That Halloween had been a turning point in many ways for Remus. The war was won, but he’d lost everything. Sitting at the bar in a pub, a man he didn’t know had clapped him on the shoulder joyously as he downed his drink after a toast. It took everything in Lupin’s power to keep himself from punching him in his sloppy, smiling face. He would have let himself do it if he was a normal man, but his lycanthropy made it too risky. One marauder was already a murderer; there couldn’t be another. Remus escaped the pub and was promptly sick in the adjacent alley. He coughed and spat, leaning heavily against the wall as the ground tilted. He steadied himself after a moment and pressed his freezing hands against his tightly closed eyes. He burned with tears. He felt a swirling motion in his mind.

He’d always been a thoughtful sort. Not just meaning careful and understanding, though he was that... but also meaning, simply, full of thought. Analyzing, theorizing, thinking, always. Always thinking. Famously over-thinking. Thinking too much for his own good.

With cheering in the distance and the scent of piss heavy in the air, something snapped in Lupin, or perhaps more accurately stated, something dissolved, and he gave up thinking. He outright refused. He no longer had the stamina. He couldn’t possibly handle it anymore, the way he used to worry, care, wonder, and ponder.

He eased into a sort of numb, zoomed out feeling, quite smoothly, all things considered. Remus now feels somewhat as if he is watching a film, but one he’s already seen dozens of times. No shocks or surprises. He knows what will happen. No shocks or surprises, because the good lord in heaven, or Merlin, or the devil, one of them must know he’s reached his quota, well surpassed his limit. 

Every month, though, the moon comes to tear away his precious comatose mentality. The full moons now rack his body far more than they ever have. It wasn’t even this bad when he was a child, a pup, a minor monster. At that early point, Remus had never known real friendship. He’d never experienced that kind of comfort, that connection of love beyond that of blood. Though naturally he had ached in loneliness back then, cried to sleep thinking about his secret, and how he must keep it. How he must never get too close. How he must never let down his guard. But even so, as a whole, back then he was spared the brunt of the pain by not knowing exactly what he was missing.

Now grown and altered, Lupin manages to ignore the very idea of the moon, most days. Even when his bones feel like splinters, muscles tight and aching on the days leading up, or when he struggles to gain a satisfying breath, he figures it’s just the cold, or perhaps he’s simply getting old. But near the moon the veil to his emotions lifts, and like an angel that has strayed from the faith and been exiled, he remembers what he used to have. He aches for his heaven, his friends. He cringes under the oppressive weight of nostalgia. He craves his safety, joy, peace. His chest tightens up and his hands become fists. His jaw aches from gritting, all well before the moon begins its ascent.

Each month the cruel mother moon shakes Remus awake. More than a few times, he has tried and failed to drink or otherwise medicate through the pain, but it always manages to break through, no matter how many combinations or heightened doses he tries. This new, dreadful level of loneliness he carries serves to incense the wolf to a fresh frenzy never experienced before. The beast seeks to uncover the pain that had been buried since the last full, and to drown Lupin in it, bury him alive in the dirt and roots in the woods that should rightfully be below its feet. The wolf reminds him that he is, in fact, quite alive, and therefore able to be broken.

Every month he breaks and he bites, crashing into the basement walls of his small cottage, again and again. Each month he hopes to die, and a sickly nostalgia accompanies the sentiment. The first time he felt it, was his first moon. It seems surreal. Has he truly carried his curse for 17 years? How is his heart still beating? How is he drawing breath? How is even moving, or blinking? He thinks perhaps a snapped neck, just the right angle…perhaps a lung punctured, or perhaps a simple bleeding out. But his body endures each time. His body possesses so much more strength than his mind, two-times, ten-times. The creature inside Lupin provides him with a quiet and stubborn vitality, wiry muscles in a too-thin container.

Lupin’s memory has become decrepit, dusty from disuse. So much so that in the dawning hour after every moon, as he slowly comes awake again, it takes some time before he can remember where he is. He looks around himself and the walls provide no answers. He looks up and discovers the ceiling is equally useless, so he shuts his eyes again. A shadow of frustration creases his brow, as if he can almost remember a time when his mind was so cutting and bright. As he is now, thoughts stumble toward him, they crawl. His first thought is that he must be at his father’s house, because the smell is almost the same, but then he remembers he is older now. His second thought is that surely he must be in prison. A moment thinking that, and then something clicks, and he understands. He’s in the basement of his house. His small hidden home, a hole in the dirt to call his own.

Every month, upon waking, the amount of blood shocks him. He’s like a soldier standing guard on a high post, suddenly spotting the enemy’s flag coming over a distant hill. How could all this, that was inside him, be laid out on the ground? How is his heart still beating? How is he drawing breath? Every once in a while, Remus sees something beautiful in the blood. A flicker of something warm. The blood is real. He can see it, feel it. It proves something, although he cannot grasp what it is, as his mind drifts and twitches between levels of consciousness. A foreign word suddenly comes to Lupin’s mind— miracle. Could it be a miracle? But just as quickly, the idea dissolves away, for that is a word far too grand and clean for whatever had happened in that room.

Just how does his heart beat, and why doesn’t he just stop it himself? Lupin does not know. He thinks of it, and then a black wall blocks the path to actually deciding on something or taking action. If he were his old self, he would be able to recognize, quite easily, his old martyrdom habit showing up. His thoughtfulness had bred a sharp self-awareness, before. If he were more himself, he’d be able to decipher his inner stream of thought as it said: _I don’t deserve rest. I should have found the traitor. I should have known. It’s my fault. I don’t deserve peace. It’s my fault. I should have figured it out. It was my job, and I failed._

As he crawls back up the stairs toward the kitchen, Remus denies himself the luxury of tears. Tears are only made by living things. The wolf can cry all it wants, he can’t control that dirty, pathetic creature. And the wolf does cry. Growls and howls so loudly, as if in its stupid, bloodthirsty brain it thinks it can wake up and call back its pack mates. Drag them from the grave in its gentle jaws, to feel whole once again. Whole for at least one night each month, something like a residual haunting, caught in a loop.

As his body heals, Remus kills his mind again, curls it into a ball and hides it. Maybe something like grace does exist, because this work, this reverting back, seems just a bit easier each and every time. Lupin erases himself. Floats away from his body. He remembers things only from a distance, certain moments on repeat. 

* * *

Some repeating moments are very dim, seemingly from a few lifetimes ago. A dark wood, breaking branches, a searing pain in his shoulder. His mother screaming, sobbing, then smiling, as she puts five candles on a cake, a broken smile, eyes having aged years in a month’s time.

Some moments are little nothing things, like dust bunnies hiding under a bed… like lying cozy in his four-poster, munching on some delicious variety of chocolate, a huge book laid open before him... or a moment of distraction in class, the orange angle of sunlight through a tall, narrow window.

These things… they seem to be all there is left, just repeating time and time again. However, this brings Remus comfort, almost a feeling of warmth, for this is surely how a ghost lives. How a ghost thinks. How a ghost feels. Trapped, repeating. Trapped, repeating. Trapped, repeating.

* * *

Some moments are as wide and deep as oceans. The Sorting Hat knowing what he was, and not caring. Its first thought being Ravenclaw, like his father, and then the feeling of total surprise and strange, instant pride when he was put into Gryffindor… or the way it felt to hear his friends chatting as he came awake after a moon, no longer in the oppressive silence of the empty hospital wing.

Some of the moments are like glassy rivers at night. They appear still and harmless, but if you venture in, you’ll be swept away and lost. Speaking in hushed tones, his hands gripping leather, the smell of it heavy in the air. The smell of sweat. Stormy gray eyes pressing, pleading— let me love you. Trying to push away and then just as quickly pulling closer. A wall breaking down, and in the rubble, kissing, and more. Knowing that it’s wrong but never stopping.

Some moments hint at hurting. An ineffectual dose of something deadly—static cling compared to lightning. A baby with dark hair, smiling up at him as if he isn’t a monster, the stuff of nightmares. Then a funeral, pitied looks enraging him as he stands and mourns in rags. Then the ink on paper reading, Black sentenced to Azkaban. And he’s scared of his joy at the news. But he’s scared, more so, of the sick instinct that he would take his place behind those bars, if he could.

Now these things seem to be all there is left, just repeating over and over. But this comforts Remus, keeps him warm… for this must be how a ghost lives and thinks. How a ghost feels. Trapped, repeating. Trapped, repeating. Trapped, repeating— trapped.


End file.
